Fantasist's Scroll

You didn’t think I was going to let an unidentified mass in my lung keep me from posting some Friday Fun Links, did you?  (If that doesn’t make sense to you, go read my other blog, Diary of a Network Geek.)
Of course, I queued this post up last night and I had to work two and a-half hours late to get a couple of circuits squared away for a cutover we’re doing on my phone system, so that might have had an effect on what I picked this week.
The theme is computers and zany fun.
First, we have a link to Things Not To Do In A Server Room. Sadly, at one time or another, I’ve done most of these things. Hey, when you’re working by yourself to string cable for an entire company, things just happen!
And, having users that Abuse Their Computers Through Neglect doesn’t help things, either. I have to warn you, one of the pictures at that link is totally disgusting, so make sure not to look at it too close to lunch.
I tell you, it’s enough to make you want to Smash Your Computer To Bits, and that’s just what the people did who submitted the pictures on that last link. Reminds me of a movie I know that just happens to be like my life, except I have no Jennifer Anniston to round things out. Ah, well, maybe one day…
And, finally, just to end things on a happy note, here’s a link to pictures of Office and Computer Pranks. Now, I’ve never done anything quite like these, but there was that one time that I wrapped a guy’s cubicle in police crime scene tape after he freaked over a spam that claimed the FBI were on to him. Yeah, that probably was unreasonably cruel. But, it was fun.

So, think happy thoughts as you click your Friday Fun Links. I’ll probably be talking to my pulmonary specialist as you read these, but don’t let that keep you from having a great Friday!

Actually, to be more specific, 213 Things Skippy Is No Longer Allowed To Do In The U.S. Army.

I cannot believe I’ve never posted this as a Friday Fun Link. This is a list of 213 things that a soldier was either specifically told he could not do, or that he heard another soldier told that he could not do. And, it’s funny. Every last one of the 213 things is funny. In fact, they get more funny the more you consider them.
Some of my favorites include:
7. Not allowed to add “In accordance with the prophesy” to the end of answers I give to a question an officer asks me.
44. I am not the atheist chaplain.
83. Must not start any SITREP (Situation Report) with “I recently had an experience I just had to write you about….”
179. On Army documents, my race is not “Other”.
203. “To conquer the earth with an army of flying monkeys” is a bad long term goal to give the re-enlistment NCO.

Now, it’s Friday, so why not go read the rest? And follow the links he’s got there to support the troops. They need it now as much as they ever have.
Have a great Friday!

Just because something is simple doesn't mean it's easy.

Today is the birthday of novelist and critic Anthony Burgess

He was born John Anthony Burgess Wilson in Manchester, England on this day in 1917. Though he had written several novels early in his career, none of them were particularly successful. His career took a different tur, however, when, in 1959, he began to suffer from severe headaches and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The doctor told him he only had one year to live. The diagnosis turned out to be incorrect. However, Burgess wrote five novels in that following year, the year he believed to be his last.

Though he wrote and edited a large body of work, including a fair selection of non-fiction, he’s best known for his novel A Clockwork Orange, which is perhaps most famous for the slang language he invented specifically for that work, called Nadsat.

This week’s theme is crazy pictures on the Internet.

Now, before you start to worry, there’s nothing pornographic here, okay? Well, unless you have a fetish for fezes (fezis? fezi?) or girls drinking tea. Hey, stranger things have happened! Trust your Uncle Jim on that one, okay?
So, without further ado, here is a link to the Fez Pool on Flickr. Yes, that’s right. Pictures of people wearing a fez. Note how many are acually from the Shriners? Shriners are all brother Freemasons, just like me. Though, I haven’t actually gone on to join the Shrine myself as it can get costly.
Next, you guessed it, girls drinking tea! Or, as the site calls itself, Tea Birds. For those of you unfamiliar, “bird” is UK slang for “woman”. Makes more sense now, doesn’t it? Oh, and watch out for the links on that site. The one that takes you to Babes with Books might not be safe for work. Though, oddly, the one labelled Women with Wine IS work safe! Who would have thunk it?
In a completely different vein, also from Flickr, Mickey Mouse Croation Liver Paste? Really? Why? And how is it that people don’t think they’re eating rat?
Speaking of eating rat, how about a picture of the most polydactyl cat ever? This cutie has six toes on each of his back paws and an amazing seven on each of his front paws! According to the article, it helps him climb very well!

Okay, so it wasn’t the most inspired Friday Fun Links, but, cut me some slack, I’ve got pneumonia! And, yes, this also appeared on my other blog, Diary of a Network Geek.

I’m feeling very domestic this month.

I’m not sure if it was the four more bags of junk I threw out last night, or the six more bags I have to donate to the Salvation Army, or just moving furnature around, but I’m really enjoying home related links this month. Maybe I’m just nesting. In any case, following with the theme from last week, here are some more very strange domestic links that struck my fancy.

To start with, I’ve got two very different fireplaces. The first, called the Drop, wouldn’t work in my house at all. For one thing, it’s very modern, for another, it simply wouldn’t retrofit well with my current chimney. The other, from Hearthfalls, wouldn’t work either, because… Well, just look at them and I think you’ll see why. Frankly, it’s one of those things that looks perfect, for someone else’s house.
And, while we’re talking about water, here’s a funky lamp called, plainly enough, the Wet Lamp. It’s a lamp, in a bowl of water. Yes, electricity inside water in your house. And, it looks cool, too.
Speaking of “looking cool”, let’s contemplate the outdoors for a minute. Or, at least the garage. A European designer of unknown national origin has designed a variably transparent garage. Apparently, it’s done with LCDs, but it lets you show off your new, impossibly expensive sports car when your ridiculously wealthy friends are over, then hide it again from thieves. Sadly, I’m more likely to have a driveway edged with glow in the dark pebbles than I am the garage with disappearing walls.
Now, I am looking at new/different furnature, so I’ve got several links to that sort of thing, too.
I have a lot of friends that often find themselves in trouble with their wives and need a place to crash. Or, are going through some sort of meltdown and need a place to sit and rock while sucking their thumb and going to the “happy, quiet place”. So, this couch that opens into bunk beds struck me as useful.
And, naturally, I want to make a good impression and hide the fact that I’m as obsessed with TV as I am with books, so a reversable media center that’s combined with a bookcase seemed perfect for my living room.
Now, I’m sure none of my friends do this, but I’m told that sometimes people snoop through bathrooms when they’re in another person’s house. What better way to deal with that than a mirror that you can send SMS text messages to! So, now, when you think that nosey relative is about to snoop in your medicine cabinet, you can have the mirror tell them to mind their own business!

Now, finally, to wind things up on a more whimsical note, I have a link to a paper airplane coffee table that I just love! Yes, it’s a little strange, but you have to admit, it does look cool. And, what could go with that better than kid-sized Tetris pillows!? I can totally see those in my living room!

Well, I can tell it’s been a long week, because these Friday Fun Links just got sillier and sillier, even though they’re duplicates of the ones posted on Diary of a Network Geek. Still I hope you enjoy them and have a great Friday!

So, today, my Friday Fun Links have a theme.

I’m not sure if it was the cleaning this week or what, but I’ve been feeling very, well, um, “domestic”. So, my fun links this week pretty much all have to do with things around the house, or housing itself.
Okay, so let’s start from the outside and work our way in. First, I have a link to some interesting plans for an 11 foot by 7 foot flat in London. Apparently inspired by a janitor’s closet with a bathroom that sold for £170,000 in London’s upmarket Chelsea, the plan is really quite ingeneous.
Now, let’s talk furnishings… If you’ve just spent $335,000 on a large broom closet, you probably don’t have much left over for furnature, so it’ll be IKEA for you. No worries, though, thanks to the IKEA Hacker blog. Yes, the stuff on that blog all started life as humble IKEA flatpack that got modified into something wonderful. I especially like the breakfast nook for two.
But, you’ll need light for this tiny hovel, right? Well, thanks to Gizmodo, you can light your flat with the coolest, freakiest science-fiction lamps ever. Also, you can use the coolest, hippest, most radically arty light switches ever to turn the lights on. I thought the pool ball switch was cool for the mini-flat, since it was described as being about the size of a billards table.
But, wait! There’s more! Since this flat would be so totally strapped for space, there’d be no room for a rack of cookbooks in the kitchen, er, make that, by the tiny hotplate and microwave. So, instead, use the coo.boo Digital Cookbook that’s the size and shape of a spatula!
And, finally, in a barely related story, if you can squeeze into the fridge, get out some Ben and Jerry’s Steven Colbert’s Americone Dream ice cream. No, I’m not making that up, but, also no, it’s not quite available yet. Yet.

So, there you have it, a geek getting domestic and working on too little sleep. Enjoy your links and your Friday!
And, yes, this did appear on my other blog, Diary of a Network Geek.

Okay, these are all crazy links that almost have a theme.

Well, if you count that I found them all amusing, I guess that could be a theme.
Hey, at least they’re funny!
First, there’s chicks noodling. Now, if you aren’t familiar with noodling, that’d be bare-handed catfish fishing. No rod or reel, just you and the catfish, mano-a-mano. Er, mano-a-fino. Anyway, when I saw this on Delenda Est Carthago, I just had to share the CatfishGabblin’ video series. (Pretty safe for work, so no worries.)
Next, in a totally different vein, there’s the Hello Kitty Tarot deck. Yes, it’s the occult made cute with the Hello Kitty Tarot deck. Not much I can add to that.
But, I think the Cell Phone Micro Garden might just top it. Yes, these are actual plants in actual tiny jars that you hang from your cell phone. I guess it’s for the Greenies that want to start small.
And, for those of you with kids, I have the Revolver Cookie Cutter and “Gelli Baff“. While I think the cookie cutter is self explanitory, Gelli Baff might take a bit of description. It’s a powder that you add to water to make, well, colored goo that your kids can play with. To get rid of the good, you just add a neutralizer and more water to rinse it away. I wish we had these when I was a kid!

And, finally, there’s a story on Information Week about two kids passing notes in the comments section of someone’s blog. Apparently, all other communication was banned and locked out, but these two girls managed to find a new way to pass notes in class on the same blog that reported the story. So, watch your blog comments, folks, you never know what you might find!

So, enjoy your Friday Fun Links and I promise, I’ll write something real on my other blog, Diary of a Network Geek, this weekend.

Okay, there is no theme to this at all.

Well, I guess, links I saw this week that made me scratch my head could be a theme, but, whatever…
First, as many of us are thinking about our taxes and how to pay less of them to the government, this story from MSN about the 9 wierdest tax write-offs made me laugh. I especially liked the one about the pimped out Amish buggy.
Then, there was this story about RFID tattoos. My first thought was that it would be an interesting way to track your kids, but, apparently, they’re using it to track livestock. Which makes sense, since meat is the most shoplifted item in the stores. I mean, meat isn’t cheap, so it wouldn’t surprise me to find out how much gets stolen on the hoof, too. And, I’m sure it’d be easier for other kinds of record keeping, too.
The last wacky link is to a story about the iPod index. Well, to be more specific, an index to track currency values based on the cost of an iPod. Apparently, an Australian bank is using the iPod as a commodity on which to place relative values of world currency. I wonder if it’s occurred to them that shipping and manufacturing costs in various parts of the world might skew that index? Well, anyway, iPod fanataics already know ours are like gold.

So, now, I’ve hopefully given you something to read that ends your week with a chuckle.
Enjoy your Friday Fun links!
(And, yes, this also appeared on my other blog, Diary of a Network Geek.)